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Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation defends its record of closing slaying cases

BY RON JACKSON •
Published: April 7, 2010

Facing the recent scrutiny of a state legislator, the FBI and the media over the handling of the Aja Johnson abduction-murder case, an Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman called a news conference Tuesday to defend the agency’s homicide clearance rates.

Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Jessica Brown answers a question at a news conference Tuesday in Oklahoma City. Photo by Steve Gooch, The Oklahoman

OSBI spokeswoman Jessica Brown served as the sole speaker during the half-hour event, issuing six pages of color-coded pie charts and graphics that she said outlined the agency’s "great success.” The charts — void of any specific breakdown of homicide cases — covered the past five years and showed the agency’s claim in percentages, such as its 83.7 percent homicide clearance rate in 2009 and its 96 percent homicide clearance rate in 2005.

The national homicide clearance rate is 63.6 percent, according to the FBI’s most recent annual report.

"As you see, our numbers are way above the state and national levels,” Brown said. "Unfortunately, not every homicide case is solvable. … We get the most difficult cases. We don’t get the smoking guns. We get the decomposing bodies in the creek bed.”

‘They control the numbers’

Not everyone was impressed by OSBI’s data.

"I don’t believe those numbers,” said Dick Frye, a private investigator from Norman who attended the news conference. "Those are their numbers. It’s not like you can corroborate them. They control the numbers. … Those numbers just don’t happen in reality. We had a number of people who asked to attend this press conference today for our interpretation, and I’d just say we still have a lot of questions.”

Unsolved, high-profile murder cases in Weleetka and Anadarko are among those dealt with by the state agency in recent years.

No arrests have been made in the June 8, 2008, shooting deaths of Taylor Dawn Paschal-Placker, 13, and Skyla Jade Whitaker, 11, on a country road near Weleetka.

Nor have any suspects reportedly emerged in the Aug. 23, 2009, slaying of the Rev. Carol Daniels, whose mutilated body was found behind the altar of her Anadarko church.